Snowboarder borrows Mikaela Shiffrin's skis and wins gold - 'This must be some mistake'
So far in these Winter Olympics, we’ve seen snowboarders win gold medals in events like slopestyle and halfpipe, events more X Games than Olympic Games.
Well, now we’ve seen a snowboarder win a gold medal … in alpine skiing, a much more traditional Olympic event.
Czech Republic athlete Ester Ledecka borrowed a pair of skis from American skier Mikaela Shiffrin, then used that Yankee generosity to take the win by one one-hundredth of a second in the women’s Super G event at Pyeongchang.
Ledecka posted a time of 1 minute, 21.11 seconds, which meant that defending champion Anna Veith of Austria’s 1:21.12 was only good for silver.
You'd be shocked, too. 😱
Ester Ledecka, a world champion SNOWBOARDER, shocks the field to win a surprise-gold by 0.01 in alpine skiing women's super-G! #WinterOlympics https://t.co/YtEpNzDMDu pic.twitter.com/EeoHuALcKX
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) February 17, 2018
Tina Weirather of tiny Liechtenstein (population 37,666, 65 fewer people than can fit into Boston’s Fenway Park for a Red Sox game) took the bronze medal.
Speaking of margins as tight as the spandex racing suits the skiers wear, Lara Gut of Switzerland and Johanna Schnarf of Italy tied for fourth, and they were just .01 seconds shy of Weirather’s third-place mark.
American Lindsey Vonn, in her first Olympic appearance since winning bronze in the Super G at Vancouver in 2010, finished tied for sixth with Italian Federica Brignone.
Which, if you’re keeping score at home, means that five of the top seven performers in alpine skiing came from nations with the eponymous Alps in their territory, with the Czech Republic just a short jaunt across Austria from the mountains and the United States, of course, a solid 3,500 miles away, even from the easternmost coast of Maine.
Repeated weather postponements led Shiffrin to drop out of the Super-G competition, so she let Ledecka borrow her skis.
NBC, because botching Olympic coverage is what it does every four years, had to issue an apology after originally reporting a Veith victory. Nobody, including Ledecka herself, truly believed that the 43rd-ranked Super G skier and Alpine World Cup 68th-ranked overall skier would truly emerge in first place on the world’s biggest stage.
Ledecka said afterward, “I was wondering what had just happened. ‘Is this a mistake?’
“I was thinking, ‘OK, they’re going to change the time, I’m going to wait for a little bit then they’re going to put some more seconds on.’
“I was just staring at the board and nothing was happening and everyone was screaming and I started to think, ‘OK, this is weird.'”
Ester Ledecka on why she’s still wearing her goggles, hours after winning Super-G: “I was not as prepared as the other girls. I don’t have makeup on.” #pyeongchang2018 #olympics pic.twitter.com/qrsMPYohPi
— Evan Doherty (@YSportsEvan) February 17, 2018
Ledecka, until she had a gold medal rather decisively telling her otherwise, thought skiing was her weaker sport when compared with snowboarding.
Indeed, she is looking forward to competing with one plank strapped to her feet instead of two, saying, “Until today, I thought I was a better snowboarder. I didn’t really expect this would happen so soon on skis. …
“I’m really looking forward to the snowboard and I think I should already switch on ‘snowboard girl’ now. It would be very nice to win both and I will, for sure, do my best for it.”
The downhill skiing event is on Wednesday, which is also the same day as the parallel giant slalom snowboard event; Vonn is the favorite in that event, in which she won gold in Vancouver; Ledecka would be up against stiffer competition.
In the meantime, the Czech Olympic Team referred to it on their official Twitter as the “Miracle on Snow”:
Ahoj! 👋 #MiracleOnSnow 🥇 #czechteam 🇨🇿 pic.twitter.com/t48s0c8Cjo
— Český olympijský tým (@olympijskytym) February 17, 2018
Ledecka, meanwhile, referred to the emerging controversy between her skiing coach and her snowboarding coach, saying, “I’m sure my ski coach will be a little bit pushy on the downhill but my snowboard coach wants me on the snowboard. So it’s like when you have a father and mother who are switching their children.”
When asked what she would choose if she were pressured to pick between skiing and snowboarding, Ledecka simply replied that she would choose a new coach.
Hodně štěstí, Ester. Good luck.
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